The REST API of Nova only accepts UUIDs [1]. The translation from object name to its UUID (like volume name to its UUID) is usually done via the novaclient. That's why I added the python-novaclient as affected project and marked it as invalid for the Nova project.

Change abandoned by Matt Riedemann (<email address hidden>) on branch: master
Review: https://review.openstack.org/310722
Reason: This isn't being worked and I'd -2 it anyway. We're actively trying to remove proxy code from novaclient, and if we did this we'd have to add a proxy call to cinder to get the volume id via the name, and in this case I'm considering it something we're just not going to fix, people should use openstackclient for this if they need the convenience.